Tuesday, January 25, 2011

This one deals with some of the basics and focuses on measurement of jugular venous pressure.

This one reviews the literature and concludes that the test characteristics of jugular venous examination are poor (keeping in mind, of course that test characteristics can never be better than the skill of the examiner).

Speaking of which, this post shows four fascinating videos from 1957 which show us how far our skills have devolved.

The growing attitude that old fashioned physical examination is becoming useless is a self fulfilling prophecy: as clinical skills devolve the test characteristics of physical exam maneuvers will get worse.